Posts Tagged ‘inflitration’

Happy Solstice everyone. Gotta say, it snuck up on me. I’ll still be in spring mode for a couple of more weeks, though the plants seem to know what time it is. A few days ago, the first Clarkias opened. Farewell to Spring.

Somewhat unrelated (though I see that clarkias are blooming in the relevant photos from last year) Landscape Architecture Magazine has an article, From Gray to Green, about PlantSF.org, a non-profit that works to take out pavement in San Francisco and replace it with permeable and planted surfaces. Basically, too much of San Francisco is covered with buildings and concrete — between 60 and 90% according to the article — so the sewer system often gets overloaded during rainstorms, dumping dirty runoff and raw sewage into the bay. Yuck. Richmond has the same problem, clearly visible every time it rains. The solution is to replace concrete with surfaces that allow stormwater to infiltrate into the soil. Enter PlantSF.

We went to a PlantSF planting party last year (according to the article, that particular project was called ‘Mission Roots,’ who knew?). These photos are from two PlantSF plantings, taken several months later, sometime around June to judge from the blooming clarkias. I can’t remember which street we worked on, but it was somewhere in the Mission a few blocks from Humphry Slocombe (Oolong or Guinness Gingerbread ice cream anyone?). It’s not too often I use an ice cream shop as a landmark, but that’s how I found the sites when I went by afterwards to see the finished plantings, and I’m sure I could never find them again without having a cone first.